the end of the creative work, there has been, or will
be, room for the whole plan. Hence fossils are little by little
completing our system of nature; and, if all were known, would perhaps
wholly do so. The great plan must be progressive, and all its parts
must be perishable, except its last culminating-point and archetype,
man. Tennyson expresses this truth in the following lines:

"The wish that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave;
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.

'So careful of the type?' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, 'a thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go.

'Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.' And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love Creation's final law--
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw,
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed--

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more? A monster, then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil."

The farther explanation given by evolutionists that those ancient
forms of life may be the actual ancestors of the present animals, and
that through all the ages the Creator was gradually perfecting his
work by a series of descents with modification, was probably not
before the mind of our ancient Hebrew authority, nor need we attach
much value to it till some proof of the process has been obtained from
Nature. A farther reason, however, which was intelligible to the
author of Genesis, and which is fondly dwelt on in succeeding books of
the Bible, depends on the idea that the Creator himself is not
indifferent to the